"Sex is a game, a weapon, a toy, a joy, a trance, an enlightenment, a loss, a hope," Sallie Tisdale has written about a topic that continues to drive our culture to distraction and fuel sermons by preachers who worry more about sex than they do about walking their faith.
Suzanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) is entering a new phase in her life. Now that her two children are teenagers, she wants to return to work. Her wealthy and influential husband (Yvan Attal) is a doctor who has some reservations about the changes his wife is making. Suzanne is taking some refresher courses on physiotherapy and overseeing the building of her new office in their home.
She helps Ivan (Sergi López), one of the workmen on the project, move the junk out of the room when he's the only one to show up for the task. They sweat together. It is only a matter of time until their mutual attraction spurs them to passionately kiss and have sex. Ivan breaks his ankle and injures his leg trying to stop Suzanne's runaway car on a hill. He is hospitalized and their need for each other deepens. Suzanne knows that they come from very different worlds; she is rich, he is poor. However, they are both trying to reclaim their lives: he has just been released from prison and she is re-entering the workforce after years of being a mother and home-maker.
Sexual craving drives them and animates their days as she pretends to go on errands and ends up at his place. Their erotic pairing is both a joy and a trance. When Suzanne makes her decision to leave her husband, she decides there is no profit in trying to deceive him. Without hesitation, Suzanne tells him that she loves Ivan and wants to be with him. He is stunned and then enraged over her infidelity. Suzanne's son stands by his mother whereas her daughter sides with her father. Meanwhile, the two lovers take an idyllic trip to Spain where he was born. His young daughter accompanies them as well as her son. But it becomes a shattering experience when Suzanne's card doesn't work at a gas station and Ivan has no money on him. Out of desperation, she sells an expensive watch to a stranger to get fuel for the car. The incident is troubling because it is exactly what her husband predicted: that the two lovers would end up in poverty. He decides to use every trick in the book to make sure they are miserable after returning to the city. Suzanne makes one last ditch stand to out-maneuver her husband but it fails and Ivan is sent to jail.
Leaving is written and directed by Catherine Corsini and, as usual, it is fascinating to see how sensuous the sex scenes are on the screen when handled by a woman. Kristin Scott Thomas gives a nuanced performance as Suzanne, a middle-aged mother whose passionate relationship with Ivan draws out her long submerged erotic being. Yvan Attal as her husband, comes across as a chauvinist who sees and treats his beautiful wife as both a trophy and a servant meant to meet his needs and desires. When he loses her to another man, he gets locked in his attachment to Suzanne and gives in to revenge and power plays designed to return their lives to what they used to be. Sergei López is just right as the working-class Spaniard who is swept away by his love of this bourgeois woman from another world. We identify with his shame and vulnerability in the face of a difficult, if not impossible, future.
The finale to Leaving is quite disappointing, given the high quality of what has preceded it. But like sex itself, there is no perfection but only the sweat and the majesty and what happens next.
